Thursday, November 12, 2009

Workshopping Ethics

Comment Up

Tonight there is a workshop on an Ethics Policy for the City of Lake Worth. This is a long time coming. Most of us know the difference between right and wrong but now the Commission will discuss it for hours and hopefully agree to a policy. Commissioner Jennings first brought this up a year ago and it was defeated from the dais. I know. A lot of you feel that having a policy will be meaningless. I think that it will be effective. It should be a policy that at least provides comprehensive and unambiguous guidance for avoiding conflicts-of-interest and demands full disclosure. If they don't follow it, they will have you and me reminding them.

Once this ethics policy is approved, will it mean that a commissioner (even if he/she does not reveal their elected position) will no longer be able to intimidate or accuse another resident or shopkeeper directly or indirectly, based on his/her own opinion or moral code of what may or may not be true, is or may be conjecture and/or impossible to substantiate?

Will this mean that employees such as Andres Reyes and Howard Jordan will not be subjected to retaliatory measures by superiors for bringing forth information they deem relevant, a safety issue or a direct threat to the public or any other type of wrongdoing in the workplace?

Let's hope so.

1 comment:

Karri said...

Lynn,

It is ironic in light of recent activities in our community that Commissioner Jennings was the one who put this on the table.

Thank you for reminding us.